3 Reasons Why Physical Therapy Often Successfully Treats Plantar Fasciitis

If you’ve been diagnosed with plantar fasciitis, odds are your treating physician will recommend that you partake in physical therapy. Regardless of whether you’re hesitant to jump into a physical therapy routine or you can’t wait for your first session, it pays to understand why PT can be a perfect solution to your plantar fasciitis pain. Here’s a look at why physical therapy is the most common form of treatment for plantar fasciitis.

Why PT Works For Plantar Fasciitis

Here’s why we often push patients to follow through on a physical therapy plan if they’ve been diagnosed with plantar fasciitis.

• You’re Still Going To Stress Your Feet – You’re still going to be stressing your feet each and every day, so it stands to reason that you should pursue a treatment that not only helps the area heal, but helps to prevent further recurrences of pain. While rest can help provide short-term relief, it’s physical therapy that will help ensure you achieve long-term relief. It’s not enough to just protect the area from stress by not using it, because you’re going to need your feet every day for the foreseeable future. By strengthening them with targeted exercises and strength training movements, you can help prevent another plantar fascia issue in the future.
• It Can Help Prevent Surgery – The longer you go without actively treating a condition, the worse that problem tends to get. Even if your pain doesn’t get excessively worse, the damage to the plantar fascia can become more severe, making it less likely to respond correctly to conservative treatment. By partaking in physical therapy, not only are you strengthening the fascia and helping it become better able to handle stress without becoming inflamed, you’re also working to prevent against the eventual need for surgery. Conservative care is always preferred in lieu of operative care, so take advantage of physical therapy when it can be most effective, which is sooner rather than later.
• Gives You The Tools – Physical therapy is also recommended for treating plantar fascia issues because it gives the patient the tools they need to eventually manage the condition on their own and take action if symptoms begin to return.

At the end of the day, physical therapy helps treat plantar fasciitis by strengthening the area to provide long-term relief, preventing the need for surgery and by equipping the patient with all the tools they need to manage any future issues on their own.